Lessons in Gratitude Day 911–Change in the Air

Posted on September 9, 2014 by mtchamblee

Last night I slept with the windows open again. I love the autumn; it is my favorite season of the year. One of the few benefits of the summer blazing by as fast as it did was that it hurried me toward my favorite time of year. Among the first sign of the changing of seasons is those first cool nights that herald the waning of summer heat and the onset of autumn cool. I love it when I can finally open the windows in the evening and let the fresh night air replace the stale conditioned air that has prevailed during July and August heat. Opening the windows brings indoors the myriad sounds of the night creatures whirring, croaking, and chirping with amazing volume.  The night has its own rhythm in the cacophonous racket set up by thousands of unseen critters. I am grateful for the coolness, grateful for the racket, grateful for the approach of the harvest season, and a time for winding down.

There is a time for every purpose under heaven, the philosopher wrote, a time to sow and a time to reap. We do our sowing in the spring, our cultivating, watering and tending in the summer, and our harvesting in the fall. It has been so for thousands of years, and so it is today.

It’s dark when I get up these days. I get up around 5:15 each morning, so the dark is not all that unusual. But these days it’s still dark when I pad back into the kitchen for my second cup of coffee, always around 6 a.m. In the middle of summer, it’s well on toward bright morning by 6:00, but as the days grow shorter, it will eventually grow dark in the morning as well as in the early evening. That I do mind a bit, as I really dislike doing my 27-mile commute home in darkness. It always makes me more tired when I have to do that, but as with most everything else, I get acclimated to it.

With many forecasts pointing to a cold, harsh winter this year, I am reminded once again how fortunate I am to have a warm, dry and safe home that shelters my body from the elements and provides a sense of home for me. As much as I love fall and winter (my second favorite season), dealing with the onset of inclement weather always brings to my mind the many people for whom warm and safe shelter is not a reality.

Tonight really is about simple things. A comfortable place to lay my head at the end of a long and semi-stressful work day. Gratitude for the abundance that is present in my life, even when I don’t acknowledge or feel it. The blessings and beauty I see in the nature around me. These are simple things and yet they have a profound impact on how I life my life and experience the world around me.

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Lessons in Gratitude Day 910–I Wish You Well

Posted on September 8, 2014 by mtchamblee

I am grateful for the informal education I have undertaken in spiritual matters. A couple of years ago I spent a fair amount of time learning about and practicing various techniques associated with mindfulness meditation. And while I do not wish to misrepresent myself as a Buddhist in any form, I will say that I have come to deeply appreciate various elements of meditation, Buddhist practice and principles, and mindfulness. Today I am particularly grateful for the practice of Metta or Maitri–lovingkindness meditation. This is the practice of wishing people well and sending good thoughts out to a variety of people and beings.

This morning as I drove into work I was offering metta, beginning with myself and working my way through a litany of people to whom I wanted to send kind, loving wishes. Good thing too, because I was going to need it later. I sure hope you can stack up good will and that my first thing in the morning prayers went out across the ethers to the various people I was praying for (I consider it to be somewhat like prayer, though it technically isn’t…), because before I had been at work even an hour I had email interactions with people who irritated me so badly that all my well-wishing flew right out the window.

Most days I begin my lovingkindness meditation by wishing myself good things: May I be peaceful and happy. May I be safe and protected from harm. May I be healthy and strong in body, mind, and spirit. May I live with joy, ease, and wellbeing. I add three or four other wishes for myself before shifting to others. I next offer metta for my family and dear friends, followed by a broad group: my teachers, acquaintances and coworkers, my neighbors, and sort of miscellaneous “neutral” people with whom I interact. Then I turn my attention to the more challenging group of people: those who are referred to in some teachings as my “enemies,” though I refer to these people as “people with whom I struggle, whom I need to forgive, people I have difficult feelings about/toward.” And then I close with the broadest group of all–all beings. And in that I include humans and all beings on this world and beyond. Yes, I offer metta for extraterrestrial life forms and four-legged sidekicks.

I am grateful for all that I learned as I wandered this path. The 18 months I spent regularly participating in sitting meditation and classes at the meditation center had a deep and significant impact on my life at the time and have significantly informed the way I carry myself and walk through the world. While I would hardly say I am an expert and still struggle to restart a stalled meditation practice, I am grateful not simply for the tools and processes I learned, but also the way in which that time shaped and continues to shape me in a variety of profound ways. And I know that restarting my stalled practice is as simple as returnng to the breath, stepping out of my noisy life (go placidly amidst the noise and haste…), and being with whatever shows up.

Sometimes people can absolutely send me over the edge; today was a bit like that. But I really am glad that I began the day by wishing us all well, god knows we need all the lovingkindness we can get. Here at the close of the day, before I take my rest, I will offer metta again, including those beings I encountered today who made me so crazy. We are each wayfarers, sojourners on this path of life and we’re all–well most of us–are doing the best we can. I can hardly argue with or be mad about that. Max Ehrmann says this in The Desiderata: “As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.” Sounds like pretty good advice to me.

May all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. May all beings know true happiness and peace. So be it!

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Lessons in Gratitude Day 909–Keeping it Simple

Posted on September 7, 2014 by mtchamblee

Lately it feels as though my life has gotten terribly complicated. Everything seems to be up in the air and chaotic. It’s kind of like a meteorological phenomenon–I am in an unstable weather pattern over the next few weeks during which periods of stormy weather and unsettled conditions will prevail. Strong storms, locally heavy flooding rains with occasional glimpses of the sun will prevail. A very unsettled weather pattern to be sure. Of course, this is a metaphor (I’m a big fan of metaphors), and what we are actually talking about is an intense period of activities around my work life, as well as complications in my living situation. A lot of things are swirling right now. Chaos, right? Except they needn’t drive me crazy.

I’m slowly discovering that sometimes I make things a lot more complicated than they need to be. I say slowly, because even as it’s dawning on me that I have some control in the situation–not control over some of the drama that’s occurring, but over my reaction to the drama–it’s taking a while to get through to me. How is it that I keep forgetting that I have it within my power (if not quite in my ability) to keep things simple? Life will often present complications and chaos, or at least the appearance of chaos, but it’s how I choose to deal with it that determines the level of impact that it has on my life. The first line of The Desiderata says, “Go placidly amidst the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence…”

Therein lies one key to simplifying: I need to “go placidly” in the midst of all the drama and swirl that surrounds me. Somehow even in the unfolding of life around me in all its wonderfully messy complexity, I have to learn how to exhale, slow down, and go placidly.

Earlier this afternoon I was contemplating the growing list of things I have to accomplish within the next six to eight weeks. I find that when I think too hard about them I start to panic and panicking rarely produces quality work. So in spite of the list and the quantity and intensity of my to-do list, I ignored all of it and spent a good 30 minutes blissfully stitching up a humongous tear in the left leg of my favorite old comfy pair of jeans. Did I need to have this particular pair of jeans for some urgent purpose? Nope. Did I need to spend that half-hour sewing up an impossibly large rip, knowing in the back of my mind that it is extremely likely that they will rip someplace else the next time I wear them? Absolutely. What I needed was to calm my harried mind by doing something simple, by focusing my energy and attention on each neatly aligned stitch. It was exactly what I needed to do in that moment.

I am so grateful for the reminder to stop making things much bigger, more dramatic, and more complicated than they need to be. I can weary myself with hand-wringing, but in the end, things generally have a way of working out irrespective of whether I panic about them or not. I know this; I’ve even written about this very phenomenon in this blog in days past. The vast majority of things I fret over, sweat over, worry about are relatively insignificant in the scheme of things. It is not that they are unimportant and shouldn’t be given care, thought, and attention; it’s simply that very few of them are of life and death importance. Richard Carlson got it right when he wrote, “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff and it’s All Small Stuff.”

Now I have had times in my life when much of the “stuff” I was dealing with was anything but small, and yet in the midst of it, I still had to learn how to approach it, how to manage myself in the process of managing the chaos. The swirl was happening all around me, difficult things were happening to me, but at the center of it I had moments of absolute calm. The things that I am facing in my life right now are less dramatic than what I experienced just a few years ago. I know that if I can hold the attitude of keeping things simple, not overcomplicating or stressing about them, and focus on the one thing I can control–me–then I can come through this time and these stressors healthy and whole. And while it may be easier said than done, it’ll definitely be worth the effort.

“Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer,” Maya Angelou once wrote. Gratitude is many things for me. Tonight it is my way of keeping it simple by focusing on the multitude of blessings–great and small–that bring peace and so many other good things into my life. May it continue to be so.

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Lessons in Gratitude Day 908–Sisters in the Struggle

Posted on September 6, 2014 by mtchamblee

I am grateful for many things that enrich and bless my life each day. At the top of that list is family. I feel so fortunate to have family members whom I love and enjoy connecting with as often as I can. Two years ago when I relocated across the country from California to Maryland, I moved to within a 20-minute drive from each of my three sisters. It was the first time in over 30 years that I’d lived in the same place as one of my sisters, and the first time in in over 45 years since I’d lived in the same town as all three of them. This has been a really wonderful thing.

Today represented a wonderful reminder of just how nice it is to be in regular contact with well-loved siblings. This morning, one of my older sisters called me. “Did I wake you?” she asked, though appeared to be relatively certain that she hadn’t or relatively unconcerned if she had. I assured her that she had not and proceeded to chat with her as she took a morning walk in her neighborhood while I finished my coffee. It was a scenario we’ve repeated many times over the years. She walks and talks and I sit and listen, offering occasional commentary, advice, and when needed, comfort and reassurance. When she is struggling with a particular issue, she knows she has a listening ear and a solid shoulder and some reasonably good perspective and advice.

It is what we do for one another, my sisters and I. We have each other’s backs. It is a blessing and a gift and I do not take it for granted. I chatted with that sister for a while, before hanging up and preparing to get on with my day. Somewhere over the next little while after I’d hung up, I dropped back into the mild mental funk I’d been in earlier in the morning. It’s not unusual for me to have a bit of a letdown on the weekend, particularly if it’s been a challenging week. I have a lot of things on my plate, at work and at home–a lot of moving parts, options to evaluate, decisions to make. It’s enough to make anyone a little cranky.

As I began to sink  into the funk, my younger sister called me to check in and see what I was up to. As I grumbled about the various struggles I was facing, she listened patiently and calmly, offering a variety of helpful suggestions and advice. “Are you writing this down?” she asked after she’d outlined a string of ideas. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to remember these pearls of wisdom, so you’d better get them down.” That made me smile, and I did get a piece of paper and write some of it down, though I doubt I captured every pearl that dripped from her lips. Alas. By the end of the conversation I was feeling a bit better and was able to get on with the rest of my day. It wasn’t my most productive day ever, but it was a decent one nonetheless, made that much better by bookend conversations with two of my sisters. It’s past time for me to reconnect with my oldest sister and my two brothers. I’ll get on that in the near future.

I am grateful for all of my siblings, those with whom I interact with regularly and those with whom I check in periodically. It’s not about the frequency of the connection, it’s about the strength of it. The ties that bind us are stronger than we may even know. As I was pondering it the other day I realized that I am part of a tightly woven network of support that connects and protects the various members of my family. That extends out to my twelve nieces and nephews and even my great nephew. It means that I will reach out to and defend and aid as best I can any of my siblings and their families, and vice versa. Even when I have struggled, whether financially, emotionally, or mentally, I have always known that I have people I can fall back on, who have my back no matter what. At the end of the day we are connected by more than blood, but by heart and spirit through love. It really doesn’t get much better than that.

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Lessons in Gratitude Day 907–Day is Done

Posted on September 5, 2014 by mtchamblee

Sometimes I am like a broken record–I find myself returning to particular themes over and over again as I write this blog. But then I realize that I can’t help it. On my journey of gratitude I repeatedly reconnect with variations of the same themes. For example, I have written about family many times over the past 900+ days. The beauty of returning to themes it that it causes me to pay attention differently. Even though I’ve frequently written about how grateful I am for my siblings, my children, my extended family, I constantly gain new insights or fresh inspiration about something new and wonderful about them that deepens my gratitude. The beauty I see in nature all around me is also a consistent theme; the things I notice as I walk the dog or drive down a country road or sit outside in the evening are constantly new and wondrous.  So many things to be grateful for, I really am surrounded by blessings.

At the end of a long day in a really long, “short” week (because of the Labor Day holiday), I don’t really have the energy to be particularly profound, but will offer what I’ve come to call simple gratitude, gratitude for very basic, ordinary, often unremarkable things that nonetheless add such value and richness to my life.

I am grateful simply for this day and the way it unfolded. I began my work day having one critical task that had to be accomplished by early afternoon. It would require some dedicated work from and cooperation of our team. I am pleased and grateful for the way they showed up, contributed their time, energy, and thinking to help us get it done. And get it done we did, even though there was a last-minute glitch that required me to leave the final piece in the hands of one of my colleagues to complete the project. It’s nice to be able to turn something that important over to a trusted coworker and know that it will get done and be done thoroughly and well. That is a wonderful thing.

I’m grateful for my four-legged sidekick, Honor, who continues to model for me how to not sweat the small stuff, to live in the moment, enjoy laying in the grass on a sunny day, demonstrating completely unconditional love and devotion, interacting with openness and friendliness to everyone you meet, and taking great pleasure in the simplest of things. In scary moments I worry about what I’d do without her and how sad I’ll be when she’s gone, but then I realize that’s exactly the point: to live and love in the moment and not sit in dread anticipation about that hopefully distant but completely inevitable day when she and I will part company for good on this side of the earth plane. Still, there are few beings who are sweeter than she is and I am more grateful than I can express to have her in my life.

I am grateful for the basics in my life: a roof over my head that keeps me safe, dry, and warm (or cool), good, healthy food in my refrigerator, reliable transportation that carries me everywhere I need to go. And while I continue to have the normal aches and pains of a 55+ year old person, I am relatively healthy and able bodied, and do not take my mobility and good health for granted. I have, as I wrote the other day, what I need , even if at times I want more. And I am, of course grateful for my family, who constantly warm me with their love; that too I try not to take for granted. At the end of the day, I know they have my back and I have theirs.

At the end of a long day, it is good to reflect on the simple blessings in one’s life. I for one am deeply grateful for and am looking forward to a little rest this weekend. As I prepare to rest my head and quiet my mind, I found myself thinking about the song, “Day is Done,” also known as “Taps” that they play in the military at the end of the day and at memorial services. From the first verse:

Day is done, gone the sun
From the lakes, from the hills, from the sky
All is well, safely rest
God is nigh.

And so it is.

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Lessons in Gratitude Day 906–Good People, Good Work

Posted on September 4, 2014 by mtchamblee

One of the “lessons” I learned fairly early in my 900+ days blogging about gratitude is that some days you don’t feel like writing about what you’re grateful for. In the early days of this blog it was often because I’d had a tired or demoralizing day job seeking with little or no success. I battled serious and understandable depression back in those days, having lost my father, my job, my partner, my home all in a six-month stretch. And so some days I just didn’t feel like writing. I was smart enough to realize, however, that focusing on and writing about something I was grateful for was exactly what I needed to do on the days I felt leas like it. And so I did.

And so I find myself this evening, still exhausted from too little sleep earlier in the week and weary from a stressful day at work (at the job I was grateful to have found after nearly 18 months of un- and underemployment) tired but determined to focus on and acknowledge things for which I am grateful. I can remember during the first weeks of writing Lessons saying that, although life was difficult for me at that time, I couldn’t throw a rock anywhere in my room without hitting something I was grateful for; I was literally surrounded by blessings. It was true then, it’s true now.

I am grateful this evening for my coworkers–all of them. A team of eight hardworking, creative and talented individuals, with whom I work most closely day to day. They are also human, each of us bringing our personalities, backgrounds, idiosyncrasies, and foibles. “We are who we are all day, every day,” has become my mantra, not just for our team but for nearly everyone I know. We show up fully as who we are in all our splendid imperfections. In the midst of some current challenges our institution is facing, a subset of our team met late this afternoon to begin to hash out how to deal with some serious budget issues in an exceedingly short period of time. We have to turn our recommendations in by mid-afternoon tomorrow, having just received our full instructions this morning. Like any democratic, consensus-building leader, I had invited as many of our team members together as possible to discuss our approach. There are definitely times when it would be easier to be autocratic and dictatorial. This was one of them. After over an hour of discussing, debating and at one point near shouting, we made some progress and determined to return to it the next morning, only a few hours before the deadline.

After the meeting, the colleague with whom I’d exchanged verbal blows (at one point I pointed my finger emphatically at him, raising my voice in irritation) remained behind explaining the points he had been trying to make. It’s like that between me and this person–we’re wired quite a bit differently and at times we each have to work really hard to understand where the other is coming from to reach common ground. In spite of that, I hold this colleague in as high regard as I do those with whom my personality is more similar. The butting of heads is simply part of the way I relate to this colleague, with another it might be quite different. There’s a proverb that says, “As iron sharpens iron, so a person sharpens his/her friend.” And in a lot of ways that’s what we do for one another in our workplace, we sharpen one another, sometimes through sparks and friction and other times through gentler more measured interaction. In either case, I learn and grow from my interactions with the people around me, those who are like me and those who are very different from me.

This has been a challenging but good day. I am tired, exhausted really, but grateful not simply that I have a job, but that I am able to do good work with good people who make me better and because of our work make the world better. At the end of the day, you can’t ask for much more than that.

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Lessons in Gratitude Day 905–Enough is Enough

Posted on September 3, 2014 by mtchamblee

Today I made a small deposit into the bank account of one of my offspring. It wasn’t much–I didn’t have much to give. But it was more than they had and they were better for the having. I pondered this a few hours later, shaking my head in mild disgruntlement that I wasn’t able to help more, but then I found myself shrugging realizing there will always be people with more money (resources, possessions, etc.) then I have and always those with less. It, like so many other things, is all relative. I gave my kid a few dollars from my somewhat limited but greater than their supply of cash. I had it to give, they needed it, so I gave it. There was a time a few months ago when I had to borrow money from them. Second lesson: sometime the shoe is on the other foot and it’s you who is in need and someone else provides for you. It all comes back around and evens out in the end. And even if it doesn’t equal out dollar for dollar, there’s no real way to measure the value of a kindness, a gift given at just exactly the right time. There’s no accounting for the timing of the kindness, much less the actual cash value of it.

I am grateful this evening for having enough means from which I can give. As with so many things, it’s really about where I choose to focus my attention. At times I have been frustrated by my lack of resources, embroiled in a not-so-helpful scarcity mentality in which what I have is not enough and I find myself wanting more. But when I shift my perspective and look at what I have I am challenged, because in many ways I have way more than I need.

I have these flashes of awareness that I live in abundance. Not opulence, but abundance nonetheless. Sometimes I have these moments of lucidity (usually when I’m first awake and writing in my morning journal or late in the evening when I am preparing to write this blog or am sitting on my bed too tired to do anything but think, nod off, dream) and then during the often frenzied course of the day, I forget them.  I would do well to remember this one and not plug back into the matrix of unreality that keeps telling me I don’t have enough when in reality I have more than enough. Abundance is one of those concepts that is relative. My relatively “simple” way of living might seem wealthy to many people in many parts of the world and in some parts of the US. To those of significant financial means, I suppose I live like a pauper. What matters to me in this moment is how I view where I sit. And in this moment, I sit in abundance.

There are many things I would like to do, some things I would like to have, some places I would like to visit that I am temporarily unable to do, have, visit because I lack the means. But I can’t get so caught up in all the things I can’t do, don’t have, haven’t seen that I completely miss the many tangible blessings I have all around me. In the weeks ahead I think I will spend some time sorting through and giving away some of my possessions. I used to fear that if I gave away the clothes I no longer wear my closet would be nearly empty. But the alternative is to keep things that I never wear or use that would be wonderfully useful to someone else.

I’m grateful for all that I have. Even during the times of my greatest struggles, I have mostly had what I needed. I live on a relatively tight margin, but there is a margin, and I have enough that I can give to others. Enough is enough. It really is all relative, I shake my head and smile. Now if only I can remember this tomorrow…

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Lessons in Gratitude Day 904–For the Love of…

Posted on September 2, 2014 by mtchamblee

I am grateful to be surrounded by wonderful people. Even when I don’t realize it. Especially when I don’t realize it. They are all around me, physically, virtually, perhaps even ethereally. Every time someone thinks about me, I am blessed. Every positive intention sent my way finds its way to me one way or another. Like the moment of grace I experienced yesterday “out of the blue” for no apparent reason. Perhaps at that very moment, someone was thinking about me, hoping I was okay. Perhaps it was an angel or the breath of god, or the spirit of my mother now 19 years gone or my father nearly four years gone. It is enough to be reminded that I am loved or at the very least thought well of by a variety of people. I am grateful for that.

This doesn’t happen by accident. Over the years I’ve developed friendships, acquaintanceships, colleague-ships and other genial and loving relationships with people all over the country and in different places around the world. I’m not sure when I really became interested in people; as a child I was somewhat shy and definitely preferred animals to people. My best friends were my siblings and my dog, and perhaps one or two schoolmates. But at some point my shyness became an asset: as a non-talker I became a really good listener, sitting for significant periods of time while various teenaged peers and friends told me their woes and I dispensed my sage wisdom. I was startled when I began to realize that even some adults talked to me about some nagging issue and listened to what I had to say with respect and interest. If you would have a friend, be a friend, I read somewhere, and I suppose I took the “be a friend” part very seriously.

In recent years it has come as no small surprise to me that I actually love people. It’s not simply that I love individual people; I love people in general. This is most startling to me as a well-established introvert who needs quiet time, still loves animals, and deeply misses hanging out with cows because they don’t want anything from me. Over the past few years the realization of my love for humans has come into sharper focus, particularly during the “series of unfortunate events” I experienced between September 2010 through March 2011, the aftereffects lasting for the next 18 months. It was during my own “suffering” that I was really able to deepen my sense of compassion and love for the people around me. It helps to define how I interact with people now, and while I still have a lot to learn about holding love and compassion for my fellow human beings–particularly those with whom I struggle or vehemently and viscerally disagree–I am definitely making progress.

All of this comes back to being connected to and surrounded by wonderful people. For a long, long time, my relationships were mostly one-sided: I listened and gave, and others talked, shared their worries, problems, and grief. I did not often find myself sharing with them my on struggles and challenges, choosing to bear my own burdens and “suffer in silence.” I gave much more than I received. And while there might appear to be some nobility in this approach (“’tis more blessed to give than to receive…”), it is also short sighted, ill-considered, and sometimes downright arrogant and selfish. It took me getting knocked to my knees a few years ago to really get me to a place of being able to ask for what I need–and I’m still not very good at it. It is an act of selfishness to not offer others an opportunity to be blessed by giving, particularly if they are people to whom I’ve extended myself to help. What I found out when I was struggling was that I was surrounded by people who offered all kinds of support and help. And it wasn’t just family, though my siblings have been WONDERFUL during my tough times. It was all kinds of people, known and unknown to me who offered words of encouragement, tiny little gifts and blessings, and other offerings that sustain me to this day.

What I discovered is a wonderful kind of karma. All of the many little things I did, random or intentional acts of kindness to encourage and support people–both known and unknown–have come back one hundred fold, one thousandfold, in immeasurable ways. That is not why we are kind, compassionate, and caring in reaching out to others, but it is a wonderful unintended consequence. For the love of people, that which I give as well as receive, I am most exceedingly grateful.

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Lessons in Gratitude Day 903–A Moment of Grace

Posted on September 1, 2014 by mtchamblee

Lately I’ve been thinking about restarting a daily gratitude practice. That said, I am not at all certain I can do a daily blog as I did for some 700-plus straight days throughout much of 2012 and 2013. Still, I must confess to having suffered a bit of retrenchment, attrition not so much with regard to feeling gratitude and even expressing it, but something subtler than that. I am not entirely sure it can put it into words, but I feel like I lost something when I stopped writing this daily gratitude blog. There was a certain discipline to it that kept me focused each day not simply on being grateful, but in expressing and acknowledging it publicly. Somehow this daily practice kept me accountable to something, to someone(s) outside of myself.

Sometimes this created more pressure than I felt able to deal with, though each day I managed to write something. The perfectionist in me always wanted to write something wonderful, deep, insightful, funny, amazing. The pragmatist in me simply wanted to write something to meet my daily obligation, my promise to myself that I would focus on at least one thing each day that I was grateful for. Tonight, perhaps only for this night, I am returning to express my gratitude for grace.

You see, I have beens struggling of late–a number of internal battles about little things like my life purpose and if I have the strength and energy to keep working for social change/social justice when it seems at times to make little difference. I have come to yet another crossroads it seems. And the ones I come to are not simple little four-way stops where two roads intersect; no mine are more like those places where five different roads converge in one spot. Sometimes I have several roads or pathways in front of me and no idea which one to take. On the one hand I have the assurance that no matter which one I choose I will end up where I’m going. On the other, if I chose the “wrong” one, it will likely take me longer and I’ll endure all kinds of obstacles along the way.

So today I was pondering these various pathways and have been in prayer the past several nights, anxious and awake late into the evenings. This morning I was writing in my morning journal wrestling in writing with a variety of challenges and anxious thoughts, when suddenly a gentle wave of wellbeing washed over me. In the briefest of moments I was certain that everything is alright with me that, as Max Ehrmann said in The Desiderata, “whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” I knew in that instant the absolute certainty of that statement. In spite of all my anxieties and fears and disappointments, all the unknowns and unanswered questions, in that moment of grace I knew everything is unfolding as it should. I should note that the feeling passed and much of the burdens and rocky emotions returned. Still, nothing could remove from me that momentary glimpse into the calm stillness at my core and the visitation from whichever form of Spirit chose to show up to remind me that all is well.

I am not capturing it the way I had hoped, but am oh so grateful nonetheless for the feeling of it. I don’t know why God/Spirit/Creator/Universe deals with me they way they do, but I am so grateful for the reminder that I am not in this by myself, as much as various circumstances might make it appear otherwise. I never (a word I don’t use lightly) take these moments of grace for granted; when they come, I accept them as the precious gift they are.

I am grateful to be back, if temporarily, in the blogosphere. I am not yet sure how often I will write. I hope some of my faithful readers will come back here periodically to see where my journey and gratitude practice might take me. I would like to make it to 1,000 days before the end of the year, but I won’t force myself to squeeze something out that doesn’t want to be born. So, we shall see. In the meantime, be blessed, be well, be grateful.

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Lessons in Gratitude Day 902–Gratitude Revisited

Posted on July 1, 2014 by mtchamblee

On June 30, 2011 I wrote the first post of Lessons in Gratitude. It was an experiment, and I had no idea at the time that it was going to take me where it did. For over two years and some 900 days I participated in the experiment, writing every day, even when (and perhaps especially when) I didn’t feel like it. I formally closed out this blog on December 31, 2013 after having written over 700 straight days (after a brief hiatus in February 2012). In the end it wasn’t really about records or writing every day, it was in large part about finding a positive focus on which to end each day, concentrating on at least one thing I was grateful for.

I have missed writing every day, though I haven’t missed the pressure I sometimes experienced, feeling the need to have something profound to say every day and trying to say it eloquently. Sometimes I could barely put together a coherent thought, but sometimes it didn’t need to be eloquent to express sincere gratitude for the simplest of things. German theologian Meister Eckhart said, “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is ‘thank you,’ it will be enough.”  When you put it that way, I don’t reckon I need to be particularly articulate to put those two words together in simple gratitude for the countless blessings in my life. I say “Thank you,” aloud or in murmured prayer or in my head a dozen times a day, even on those days when I am struggling. It has been gratitude that kept me going when I thought perhaps I might simply give up.

There’s a line in the song Amazing Grace, that says, “Through many dangers, toils, and snares I have already come. ‘Twas grace that brought me safe thus far and grace will lead me home.” I’m a big fan of grace and perhaps it was grace that brought me to a place of seeking gratitude in the midst of struggle. It’s a chicken or the egg kind of conversation: I don’t spend time thinking about whether it was grace that brought me to a place of gratitude or if it was seeking gratitude that brought me into s state of grace. It really doesn’t matter one way or another. In the end I am made richer for the presence of both elements in my life, and I take neither for granted.

Three years ago yesterday I embarked upon an epic journey of gratitude. It was born out of hardship and struggle and no small amount of confusion and a desperate need to make sense of a life that had hit some significant speed bumps. But make sense of it I did, viewing the world and my life in it through the lens of gratitude. Here with some faithful readers I meandered my way through various life lessons writing and putting them out here for the world (if they managed to find it) to see. And while my reach was relatively small, I do know that others in this small circle came along with me and benefited from the lessons I chronicled here. For that I am especially grateful.

I do not know if I’ll write again tomorrow or what I will do next. I wanted to mark the occasion of the third anniversary of my first lesson in gratitude back in 2011 and to say that I remain faithful in a daily gratitude practice. Tonight I remain grateful for simple things: the love of family and friends (including my canine sidekick), the basic necessities of food, clothing, and safe shelter, to have full and relatively easy use of my body, the ability to recognize the beauty that is present all around me in each moment, and so many other things. A beautiful sunrise, the call of the mourning dove, the bright flash or red as a cardinal flies by, a bowl of cherries in summertime, a cool breeze on a hot day. It really is all around me, and I am truly grateful.

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